


Skybound

by sinshine



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, M/M, Magic AU, One Shot, Romance, Stardust AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 14:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20259562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinshine/pseuds/sinshine
Summary: “You were gonna leave me!” Ryuji pouted.“Uh, yes?” Akira lowered his eyes and lifted his hand to tug at the dark curls that hung in his face. Ryuji noticed the strangeness of his clothes and how they seemed to flutter around Akira even though there was no wind. “I don’t know you. You just fell on me.”“Oh, right.” Ryuji flushed (of course it was just his luck that he would embarrass himself in front of some mystery hottie hanging out in a pit).(Stardust AU) Ryuji meets a fallen star and they make a deal: If Akira uses magic to change the fate of his childhood friend, then Ryuji will help Akira get back home.





	Skybound

The only thing that Ryuji’s brain could process was the sheer force of movement. He hurtled along at an incredible speed, his body compelled by an unknown source to an unknown location. He tried to focus but it was as though he were trapped in a vacuum, one that stole both the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his mind. Ryuji struggled to remember the kitchen, his house next to the Wall, the picnic, finding the fallen star--

All at once, the movement ceased and Ryuji gasped to fill his lungs and then screamed when gravity returned to him as well, sending him tumbling at an angle towards the earth. As he fell through the air, he caught a brief glimpse of a stranger’s face below him, staring up in wide-eyed horror at Ryuji’s quickly approaching form. Then Ryuji bowled into them, sending them both crashing to the ground. Ryuji groaned and he struggled to push himself upright, hurried along by a second pair of hands that shoved at his chest. He realized that he was on top of the person he saw and scrambled to get off of them.

“Sorry! Shit! Lemme--” Ryuji got shakily onto his feet, but his knees immediately buckled and he fell back onto his ass. “Oh, _fuck_ me.”

Ryuji quickly tried to stand a second time and fell again. And again before resigning himself to lying in the dirt and waiting for his bones to stop feeling like jelly. He lay on his back and breathed deeply, taking in his surroundings as his head slowly stopped spinning. He was at the bottom of some kind of pit, which was concerning but not as concerning as it could have been since sides were sloped and not terribly steep. The dark-haired stranger sat an arm’s span away and stared openly at Ryuji.

Ryuji stared back and frowned.“What?”

“Uh, sorry.” The stranger spoke softly, as though he has been the one to disturb Ryuji. “Who are you?”

Ryuji’s mouth fell slack. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Me? Sakamoto Ryuji.”

“Did you also…?”

The stranger slowly lifted a finger and pointed hesitantly up at the sky. Ryuji glanced skywards, uncomprehending, then back down. “Also what?”

“Fall?”

“Obviously,” Ryuji snorted. Then his eyes grew wide and he sprang to his feet, sticking the landing this time. He whipped his head around, but there was only himself and the stranger in the pit. “_Mom!_ Oh shit, ohshit ohshit!”

Ryuji scrubbed his hands through his hair and began to pace in aimless circles as he tried to piece together what had happened to him. “The candle...! I was thinking about-!Oh, but then I thought about Ann and Haru and- and the star!”

“So, it’s a coincidence?” Akira tried to ask, but couldn’t be heard over the tidal wave of Ryuji’s thoughts.

Ryuji rubbed his hands down through his hair and over his face. He stopped walking and looked around at the pit again. A pit that looked as though it had been recently made, if the state of the overturned trees and foliage around the rim were anything to go by. Plus, there was the persistent smell of ozone. The whole area looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, like the setting for an alien spaceship crash. Except, there was nothing in the pit but himself.

Ryuji’s first panicked thought was that somehow _he had become _ _the_ _ alien_, but then he remembered the poor sucker he had fallen on. He turned and saw that while he had been busy having a personal crisis, the stranger had gotten off the ground and started trudging up the nearest slope.

“_Oy!_” Ryuji yelled and dashed in front of him, blocking the way forward. “Who are you? Where the heck are you going?”

“I’m Akira,” he said flatly, regarding Ryuji with a closed-off expression. “And I’m getting out of the big hole in the ground.”

“You were gonna leave me!” Ryuji pouted.

“Uh, yes?” Akira lowered his eyes and lifted his hand to tug at the dark curls that hung in his face. Ryuji noticed the strangeness of his clothes and how they seemed to flutter around Akira even though there was no wind. No, not fluttering, _floating_. It was as though they were underwater, the folds of fabric hanging suspended in the air around Akira, sometimes clinging to his form when he moved quickly. “I don’t know you. You just fell on me.”

“Oh, right.” Ryuji flushed and watched Akira twist a lock of hair around one of his long fingers (of course it was just his luck that he would embarrass himself in front of some mystery hottie hanging out in a pit) but then he remembered something strange. “Wait a sec! You said _you_ fell! Where didja fall from? Cuz I was in my mom’s kitchen but then there was this babble- babbling candle and-”

“A Babylonian candle?”

“Yeah, that!”

Akira’s demure expression vanished, replaced with a sudden intensity and he grabbed the front of Ryuji’s shirt and pulled him close. The timbre of his voice changed as well, transitioning into something low and threatening. “You have _a Babylonian candle?_”

“Maybe!” Ryuji felt himself freeze and then melt under Akira’s steely gaze. He tried and failed to suppress a shudder as his last two braincells fought over being unspeakably terrified and unspeakably turned on. Ohgod, what was happening, what was wrong with him? Eventually, embarrassment was what gave Ryuji the willpower to grab Akira’s wrist and wrench it away from him.

“What do you want for the candle?” Akira demanded, drawing himself up to his full height and coming closer to Ryuji even as he moved away. His robes flowed around him like liquid mercury.

“Wait, what!” Ryuji took a step back from Akira, which meant stepping higher up on the slope, and he nearly stumbled over an exposed root. “H-Hold on! What do you want the candle for?”

Akira’s face changed again, the fire leaving his eyes as quickly as it came. His shoulders slumped and he breathed a quiet sigh as he lifted his face towards the sky once more, his lips pressed into a thin line. The moonlight highlighted his features, reflecting off of his weird silvery clothes and making his skin seem to glow. When he spoke, his voice had gone soft and quiet again but Ryuji could hear the weight in his words.

“I want-” Akira’s fists clenched at his sides- “I want to go home.”

Ryuji looked from Akira’s face to the sky, then back again, and a thought slowly dawned on him. It should have been impossible, but… but _magic was real_, and he had somehow traveled hundreds of kilometers in the blink of an eye by driving a GPS candle with his thoughts. And he had been thinking about the star.

“Holy shit,” Ryuji hissed. “Are you the fallen star?”

Akira furrowed his brow, still staring hard up at the night sky. “I won’t be ‘fallen’ if I get back up there.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably just a one-shot but i have A LOT of feelings about a Stardust AU. (specific feelings about Ryuji and Akira learning how to use magic that's linked to their emotions but also about Iwai as the taciturn sky pirate captain) This is sort of to gauge interest so please let me know what you think.


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